News & Events

Current News and Notes

January 2015

Bard's Raptors beat Vassar's Brewers Tuesday, January 6, in a 61-54 victory to improve to 6-4 overall, 1-0 in the Liberty League. Vassar—the preseason coaches' pick to win the Liberty League title—has dominated the series between the schools until recently. Bard is 5-27 against Vassar all-time, but 4-3 against the Brewers since joining the Liberty League in 2011. The four wins over Vassar have come by a combined total of 13 points.http://bardathletics.com/news/2015/1/6/MBB_0106150620.aspx

December 2014

James Ketterer, Bard's director of international academic initiatives and senior fellow at the Institute for International Liberal Education, has been elected to the board of directors of the Mid-Hudson Valley World Affairs Council. The organization is a nonpartisan forum for citizen participation in world affairs. Its mission is to raise public awareness of international issues and to stimulate interest in a better understanding of world affairs. The Council presents public lectures, panels and debates, and educational and cultural programs. The council also sponsors programs and collaborative efforts to reach high school and college students and faculty. The Mid-Hudson chapter is one of 94 chapters of the National World Affairs Councils of America, the largest international affairs nonprofit organization in the United States, which works to address the need for more global understanding in America.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents a full spring season of performing arts events, including jazz and orchestral concerts, and innovative dance and theater productions, from January 31 through May 16. Highlights include the Billie Holiday Centenary Tribute, Joseph Haydn’s The Creation, American Symphony Orchestra concerts, Cynthia Hopkins’ A Living Documentary, Neil Gaiman in Conversation with Laurie Anderson, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2638

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce the gift of almost 200 contemporary artworks from New York art collectors Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg. The gift includes mostly works from the past fifteen years, close to the time Martin Eisenberg has been involved with the center as a board member and avid supporter of the graduate program, its students, and exhibitions. The Eisenbergs have supported the annual graduate exhibitions held each spring for the past eight years. In 2010, their collection was exhibited in the Hessel Museum of Art in At Home/Not At Home, curated by Matthew Higgs. Many of the artists shown in the Hessel Museum exhibition are represented in the new gift valued at approximately $2 million.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2637

As part of the Hannah Arendt Center's seventh annual fall conference, "The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Values Worth Fighting For?" the Center asked university students in the United States and abroad to answer the question, "What core American ideals can inspire Americans to sacrifice self-interest and fight for justice?" In a large pool of thoughtful and provocative submissions, two entries stood out: those of Rosa Schwartzburg '16 of Bard College and Alix Tate '16 of Waubonsee Community College (Illinois). Read their winning essays here.

Bard Academy at Simon’s Rock, located in Great Barrington, Mass. is the nation’s first two year, ninth and tenth grade accelerated high school program for boarding and day students. Upon completing the tenth grade, Academy students begin full-time college study at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce that Christine Tohme and Martha Wilson are the recipients of the 2015 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. The award carries a $25,000 prize to be split between the recipients and will be presented at a gala celebration and dinner on April 15, 2015 at 6:30 pm in New York City.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2636

Over the weekend of December 5–7, Bard College hosted the fourth annual Northeast regional C2C Fellows Sustainability Leadership Workshop. Directed by Eban S. Goodstein, director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and the Bard MBA in Sustainability, the three-day workshop offers training to college students and recent graduates aspiring to become sustainability leaders in politics and business. The event drew 35 participants this year with some coming from as far away as Atlanta and Chicago. The weekend included sessions on how to raise money, pitch an idea, and build a professional network.Read More

Bard College presents a special exhibition of photographs and poetry on display from December 8 through January 9, on view in the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Library in the atrium and the Sussman Room, 2nd floor. The exhibition features two works, “Winter Music,” a collaboration between artist/photographer Susan Quashaand renowned poet Robert Kelly, and “Madonna Comix,” a series of 26 prints by Dianne Kornberg based on 11 poems by Celia Bland. There will be an opening reception and poetry reading on Tuesday, December 9, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Library atrium.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2635

On Thursday, December 4, Valeri J. Thomson, Principal of Bard High School Early College Queens, located in Long Island City, New York, joins President Obama, the First Lady, and Vice President Biden at the White House College Opportunity Summit. The Summit brings together individuals from colleges and universities, business leaders and others who are committed to supporting college opportunities for diverse students across the country.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2633

Beginning in September 2015, Bard College and the Bard MAT Program (MAT) will partner to offer a new BA/MAT 3+2 program. The new program is designed to offer Bard undergraduates a path to a master of arts in teaching degree and a New York State grades 7–12 teacher certification in biology, history, literature, or mathematics within five years of entering college. Subject matter mastery, integration into the College’s undergraduate programs, and extensive residencies in public schools during year five are key elements of the new program. Bard undergraduates will integrate disciplinary studies into field-work requirements through tutoring and other placements.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2634

The Fisher Center at Bard College presents a special holiday performance of Nut/Cracked—The Bang Group’s beloved, witty response to The Nutcracker. Showcasing choreography by David Parker ’81 with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nut/Cracked will be performed in the Sosnoff Theater of the Fisher Center on Saturday, December 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, December 21 at 2 p.m.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2632

As a sophomore, Carl Amritt has already carved out a distinct place of his own in the Bard community. Carl was involved in student government in middle and high school in his native West Palm Beach, Florida. Now he's brought his passion for politics to his academic work in Political Studies and Environmental and Urban Studies. He's also become a leader in Bard student government, campus sustainability efforts, and the college's voting initiative.http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=116

November 2014

Bard College students Simao Chen '18 and Vikramaditya Joshi '18 represented Bard at the 66th Annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, November 12–15, 2014. SCUSA is the most prestigious undergraduate conference of its type in the world, with about 200 students from more than 100 institutions attending. Participants debate and formulate policy recommendations that model American strategic responses to national and global challenges. This year’s theme was “What’s the Worst That Could Happen? The Politics and Policy of Crisis Management.” Bard's participation in SCUSA is a component of the Bard–West Point Exchange, which provides opportunities for students and faculty from Bard and West Point to exchange ideas in the classroom, through public presentations, debates, and extracurricular activities.

Bard students Tareian King '16 and Angie Del Arca '16 have been awarded Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships to support their studies abroad for the spring 2015 semester. Human Rights/Africana Studies major Tareian King, currently studying at the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York City, received $4,000 toward her studies in Cape Town, South Africa, on the Multiculturalism and Human Rights program with SIT Study Abroad. Film major Angie Del Arca received $2,500 toward her studies at Bard College Berlin.

Meta: Subject(s): Bard Abroad,Bardians at Work | Institutes(s): IILE,Center for Civic Engagement,Bard Undergraduate Programs,Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program |

If the NCAA kept statistics that bridged different sports, Joanna Regan '15 might be in a category all by herself. Heading into the basketball season, this three-sport star had competed in 193 NCAA games, between soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. If she plays every game of the one basketball season and one lacrosse season she has left in her college career, she'll leave Bard with 232 games played.http://www.bardathletics.com/awards.aspx?aow=12

The Bard College Model United Nations Initiative proudly hosted the Bard Model United Nations Conference (BardMUNC) on Saturday, November 15 in Bard College’s Olin Hall. BardMUNC is the brainchild of various Bard affiliated organizations as well as the Red Hook High School Model UN Team. The high school and college students collaborated to run a daylong conference hosting competitive Model UN teams from as far away as eastern Connecticut and New York City. Over 150 students registered for the conference from Red Hook High School, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Arlington High School, Highland High School, Woodstock Academy, Bard High School Early College Manhattan, Bard High School Early College Queens, and Newark Academy.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2630

On Sunday, December 7, acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw and members of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellows, Hudson Valley Brass, and the chorus from the Red Hook Mill Road Elementary School, present a program of festive songs and ensembles to benefit the Scholarship Fund of The Bard College Conservatory of Music. A Winter Songfest will be performed as a family-friendly matinee concert at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2629

Bard is changing the college admission landscape. From the new Bard Entrance Examination to the unique and longstanding Immediate Decision Plan, the college is committed to bringing the next generation of students to Annandale with unconventional and distinctly Bardian strategies.http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=115

On Friday, November 14, the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College brought 25 Bard students to the nation's capital for Bard Works D.C. This career development event featured 25 Bard alumni/ae presenting on their work in various fields in the D.C. area, with opportunities for students to ask questions and connect with leaders in their fields. The gathering was followed by an alumni/ae tour of the Pentagon. Malia Du Mont ’95 organized the day's events.

Thirty-two Bard student-athletes qualified this fall for the Liberty League All-Academic Teams. To be recognized, a student-athlete must be a sophomore or higher in class standing with a cumulative grade point average of 3.20. Bard students qualified in men's and women's cross country, men's and women's soccer, and women's volleyball. Liberty League Commissioner Tracy King announced 580 qualifying students across the league, an increase of 95 over last fall.http://bardathletics.com/news/2014/11/12/MXC_1112141658.aspx

The Bard/HESP Network (Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations) and affiliated institutions will gather student leaders for a five-day conference in Istanbul, Turkey from March 13 to 19, 2015, entitled "Student Action and Youth Leadership: Civic Engagement, Social Entrepreneurship, and the Liberal Arts." Students from Bard network institutions are invited to submit proposals by December 10, 2014.http://www.bard.edu/institutes/hesp/news/student/

What might happen if a performing arts center temporarily reimagined itself as an art museum? From November 20 to 23, the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts presents The House Is Open, an inquisitive and playful pop-up installation and performance event that attempts to answer this question, examining the complex interplay between contemporary art and performance. Performance has recently entered, and occasionally transformed, visual arts institutions, but performing arts centers have been comparatively unaffected by the art world’s embrace of live performance. This fall, The House Is Open inverts the performer-in-a-museum paradigm by transforming the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts into a temporary art museum.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2621

The Levy Institute will hold its second annual Minsky Conference, entitled "Europe at the Crossroads: A Union of Austerity or Growth Convergence?" in Athens, Greece, November 21–22, 2014. Coorganized by the Levy Institute and Economia Civile, the conference will focus on the continuing debate surrounding the eurozone’s systemic instability; proposals for banking union; regulation and supervision of financial institutions; monetary, fiscal, and trade policy in Europe, and the spillover effects for the United States and the global economy; the impact of austerity policies on U.S. and European markets; and the sustainability of government deficits and debt.http://www.levyinstitute.org/news/europe-at-the-crossroads-a-union-of-austerity-or-growth-convergence

The Human Rights Project at Bard College presents a public conversation between Nuruddin Farah and Mark Danner to discuss Farah’s new critically acclaimed novel Hiding in Plain Sight. Farah, who just won a Lifetime Achievement Literary Award from the South African Literary Awards, has been hailed as “the most important African novelist to emerge in the past twenty-five years” by The New York Review of Books. This event will take place on Monday, November 17, from 6 pm to 7:30 pm in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2628

The Bard College Model United Nations team participated in the Northeast Regional Model Arab League tournament at Northeastern University in Boston, November 7–9. The conference—sponsored by the National Council on U.S.–Arab Relations—simulates the structure, proceedings, and committees of the Arab League, based in Egypt and representing 22 countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Bard students represented Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia on topics including defense, environmental and social issues, and Palestinian affairs. Bard Model UN president Gabriel Matsakis '15 served as head delegate at the conference and played the role of a member of the Egyptian cabinet. He was awarded Outstanding Cabinet Member for his excellent work. Alison Brundrett '16 and Erind Disha '16 won Honorable Mention awards for their work representing Egypt on the Palestinian Affairs committee. “This conference takes students beyond the dramatic headlines that dominate the news about the Middle East and allows them to tackle the details of a wide variety of issues in the region,” said faculty adviser James Ketterer. “The students learn about things like water resources, refugees, and education, along with defense and diplomacy—all while having to deeply understand the country they are representing.”

Bard College is proud to announce a substantial donation from the LUMA Foundation. The donation, to support Bard’s programs across the curriculum, will be recognized with the naming of the LUMA Theater at Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry, in a ceremony at the Center on November 7. The naming of the LUMA Theater will also be celebrated with a special performance of a new music/theater work developed by composer, writer, and performer Amanda Palmer, in collaboration with current and former Bard students, coproduced with Live Arts Bard.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2626

Bard history professor Richard Aldous's acclaimed account of the life of Tony Ryan, founder of Europe's biggest airline, Ryanair, was published in the United Kingdom on November 3. Originally published in August 2013, the book was lauded as "a masterful job ... with a highly readable and compelling style" (the Independent of Ireland) and was a Sunday Times bestseller. Richard Aldous says, "What made Tony Ryan exceptional was that he turned the dreams he shared with his generation into reality. That came about not because he wanted to make a fortune—although he was happy when he did—but because he had the vision to see where the market was imperfect, the courage to stake his claim, and the tenacity to see the job through. In that regard Tony Ryan was the epitome of what it meant to be an entrepreneur."

On Saturday, November 15, celebrated violin virtuoso Elizabeth Pitcairn performs with the legendary 1720 “Red Mendelssohn” Stradivarius, the Christie’s auction of which in 1990 is said to have inspired the 1999 Academy Award–winning film The Red Violin. Pianist Cynthia Elise Tobey will accompany Pitcairn. The program includes a world premiere performance of composer Sara Carina Graef’s new work, Blue Vishuddha (2014), as well Franz Schubert’s Rondo for violin and piano (“Rondeau Brillant”); Gabriel Fauré’s Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano; Franz Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3; and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9 for violin and piano.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2627

October 2014

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bard College Berlin coorganized a major public conference on Germany’s most important postwar dramatist, Heiner Müller (1929–1995). The event, held October 3 to 5, brought together political thinkers, critics, scholars, actors, and directors to explore the significance of Heiner Müller for the theater, politics, and literature of our own century. During the conference Bard students from Annandale and Berlin had a chance to meet some of Germany’s most prominent thought leaders.http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=114

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College presents two new exhibitions on view from November 6 to December 19. Spectres is an ongoing project of Belgian artist Sven Augustijnen, which revisits one of the most shameful events of European colonial history: the abduction, torture, and execution of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected Prime Minister of independent Congo. Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatán is a multilayered exhibition and architectural intervention curated by Montserrat Albores Gleason as the culmination of a three-year curatorial fellowship at CCS Bard supported by the Jumex Foundation. Organized as part of an international curatorial conference to be held at CCS Bard from November 6 to 9, Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatán takes its starting point from the narrative in Robert Smithson’s famous Hotel Palenque (1969-72), a slide projection taken from a lecture originally delivered by the artist at the University of Utah.Learn more about Spectres and Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatán.

On Monday, November 10, Steven Millhauser, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler, The Knife Thrower, and other works, reads from his most recent short-story collection, We Others: New and Selected Stories, winner of The Story Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Charles Simic, in The New York Review of Books, calls We Others “a book of astonishingly beautiful and moving stories by one of America’s finest and most original writers,” and David Rollow, in the Boston SundayGlobe, writes, “Every reader knows of writers who are like secrets one wants to keep, and whose books one wants to tell the world about. Millhauser is mine.” Millhauser will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2617

Bard MFA sculpture faculty Nancy Shaver is the first-ever recipient of the Art as Media Award presented by the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) as part of the Exceptional Merit Media Awards (EMMAs). The EMMAs were created by the NWPC in 1986 to honor and reward journalists and media outlets in radio, television, print and the Internet that inform and educate the public about critical issues that impact women’s lives. The 2014 EMMAs were presented on the evening of October 27 at The Metropolitan Club of New York City. Previous recipients include Ellen Goodman, Cokie Roberts, Barbara Ehrenreich and Diane Sawyer. Cochairs for this year’s awards were Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Nancy Shaver's work has been shown extensively in the United States and abroad in both solo and group exhibitions. She has also been the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

The Longy School of Music of Bard College has announced the formation of a unique training orchestra that provides a Master of Music degree, newly approved by the State of New York and is designed to prepare them for the mounting challenges facing today’s orchestra players. The training orchestra, recruited from the finest postgraduate musicians, will offer advanced orchestral and leadership training and grant a Master of Music degree in Curatorial, Critical and Performance Studies. All applicants accepted into the three-year degree program will receive a fellowship, which includes the full expense of tuition as well as an annual stipend.

Jennifer Cordi, associate professor of biology at Bard High School Early College Manhattan, has been selected to receive a 2014 Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics from the Fund for the City of New York. Professor Cordi joins six other extraordinary New York City public high school science and mathematics teachers in receiving this prestigious award. The prize carries a $5,000 award for Professor Cordi and a $2,500 award for the BHSEC Biology Program, to be presented in a ceremony at the Great Hall at New York City's Cooper Union on Wednesday, December 3. Professor Cordi teaches evolutionary biology, botany, and general biology. Her research focuses on Middle Devonian fossil plants and the evolutionary patterns of vascular plant groups. She is a fellow of the New York Academy for Teachers.

On Tuesday, November 18, the Bard Math Circle will host the middle-school-level American Mathematics Competition (AMC 8) exam. In its third year at Bard, this 25-question, 40-minute exam contains engaging math problems that are challenging at the middle-school level, and is intended to inspire, promote enthusiasm, and foster a healthy attitude toward mathematics. Students will be exposed to the richness of middle-school-level mathematics at a deeper level than is ordinarily encountered in the schools.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2625

The Environmental Consortium of Colleges & Universities has awarded its Great Work Award in honor of Thomas Berry this year to Erik Kiviat ’76, executive director and cofounder of Hudsonia, a not-for-profit institute for research, education, and technical assistance in the environmental sciences based at the Bard College Field Station on the Hudson River. A certified wetland scientist, Kiviat has more than 45 years’ experience with natural history and environmental issues—especially those related to rare native species as well as invasive nonnative species—in the Northeast, and across North America, Europe, and Africa.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2623

Author Laura van den Berg has been selected to receive the annual Bard Fiction Prize for 2015. The prize, established in 2001 by Bard College to encourage and support promising young fiction writers, consists of a $30,000 cash award and appointment as writer in residence for one semester. Van den Berg is receiving the prize for her book The Isle of Youth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). In this collection of stories, van den Berg explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. The characters in these stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless—grappling with the choices they have made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. Van den Berg’s residency at Bard College will be for the spring 2015 semester, during which time she will continue her writing, meet informally with students, and give a public reading.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2622

The Bard College Model United Nations team participated in the annual Security Council Simulation at Yale University October 16–19. Students served on a wide variety of committees ranging from real world issues (the Syrian crisis and Mandela's South Africa) to those drawing on more creative sources (Downton Abbey and Pirates of the Caribbean). Other participating schools included the U.S. Military Academy, Princeton, Columbia, McGill, SUNY Geneseo, Emory, Mount Holyoke, and NYU. Sophomore Jeremy Kaplitt served as Head Delegate and also won Outstanding Delegate for his work as the National Security Adviser on Hillary Clinton's Cabinet. Other members of the team were: Julia Lang Gordon '17, Simao Chen '18, Sophia Foster (BRIDGE student), Aya Qumber (PIE student), Andrew Djang '16 and Vikramaditya Joshi '18. “These simulations provide an excellent opportunity for students to learn about the complexities of international politics and diplomacy,” said James Ketterer, who co-teaches Bard's United Nations course. “While it is important to read and analyze the literature, diplomacy makes sense in a different way when you have to negotiate and make compromises with others sitting across the table from you.” The Bard team competes again next month at a Model Arab League simulation at Northeastern University.

On September 24, Pavlina Tcherneva published an article in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics that rocked the financial news. Examining widely used U.S. income data by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, Professor Tcherneva found a startling trend: over the last 60 years, the financial benefits of economic recoveries in the United States have increasingly gone to the wealthiest Americans. Tcherneva, Bard College assistant professor of economics and Levy Economics Institute research associate, illustrated her findings in a striking chart that went viral on social media. Coverage of her research appeared in the New York Times, NPR, Moyers & Company, and Slate, among other publications.http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=113

Bard College Center for Civic Engagement and the Political Studies Program will present a panel, “Europe Wonders, What Will America Fight For?” The panel will address the increasing and overlapping challenges facing U.S.-European relations, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, tensions with Russia, the military drawdown in Afghanistan, and the future of NATO and security challenges across the Middle East and North Africa. Featured panelists include Simona Soare from Romania, Joe Burton from New Zealand, and Scott Silverstone from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The event will be on Monday, November 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the Weis Cinema at the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2620

Max Kenner, Bard alumnus and executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), has won the 2014 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Education. The awards recognize 10 of the year’s most amazing achievements and the innovators behind them. On October 16, Smithsonian magazine, the flagship publication of Smithsonian Media, announced winners of the third annual American Ingenuity Awards, saluting 10 groundbreaking individuals across nine categories including technology, performing and visual arts, natural and physical sciences, education, historical scholarship, social progress, and youth achievement. Max Kenner conceived of and created the BPI as a student volunteer organization when he was an undergraduate at Bard College in 1999. Over the last decade, Kenner has led the expansion of BPI from a pilot program with 15 students to a nationally recognized education initiative enrolling nearly 300 students across six campuses in correctional facilities throughout New York State.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2615

On Monday, November 3, Julia Elliott, winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a Pushcart Prize, will read from her debut short-story collection, The Wilds, which Publishers Weekly describes as “a brilliant combination of emotion and grime, wit and horror… Elliott’s gift of vernacular is remarkable, and her dark, modern spin on Southern Gothic creates tales that surprise, shock, and sharply depict vice and virtue.” Elliott will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2616

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the opening concert for the 2014–15 season of the American Symphony Orchestra concert series on October 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. The program includes Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11, with Maryna Kysla ’15, piano; andFranz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Major (“Great”). The concert will be conducted by Leon Botstein, music director. A special preconcert talk by Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, Bard College, begins at 7 p.m.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2614

Bard has received a two-year grant from the Department of Education totaling $174,623 to support a new Global Partnership Project: Connecting International, Regional, and Language Studies. The College is one of 31 U.S. institutions of higher education to receive funding through the Department of Education’s Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Education program, which provides grants to plan, develop, and implement programs to strengthen and improve undergraduate instruction in international studies and foreign languages in the United States.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2613

Bard alumna and La Voz editor Mariel Fiori '05 has been named an Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year by Gateway to Entrepreneurial Tomorrows, Inc. (GET). GET promotes economic development in the Hudson Valley by supporting women, minorities, youth, and veterans in starting their own businesses. Every year the organization recognizes outstanding regional businesspeople with the Hudson Valley Entrepreneurial Awards. Mariel Fiori, who cofounded the Spanish-language magazine La Voz as a Bard student and has edited the publication for a decade, will be recognized for her contributions as a community leader. Fiori and five other awardees will be honored at GET's 10th anniversary celebration on Thursday, October 23, as part of the Hudson Valley Entrepreneurial Conference and Expo in Wappinger Falls.

The Classical Studies Program at Bard College presents Bracko: A reading of Sappho’s poetry on October 18 by Anne Carson, Robert Currie, Nick Flynn, and Sam Anderson. Bracko presents the lyric poetry of Sappho, the ancient Greek poet known to many English-speaking readers through Anne Carson’s translation If Not, Winter. In addition to welcoming Sappho’s most distinguished translator to Bard, the event celebrates an extraordinary moment in the history of Sappho’s poetry. Sappho made headlines in the international press this year because of the rare discovery of two previously unknown poems.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2603

Neuroscientist Stephanie Kadison, a biology professor at Bard High School Early College Queens, received a STEM Hero Award from the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) during the United Nations 69th Annual General Assembly on September 22. Professor Kadison was recognized as an exceptional educator who inspires young people to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. She was a member of the first cohort of the NYAS's Afterschool STEM Mentoring Fellowship Program, in which she taught genetics to underserved middle school students, an experience that inspired her to become a teacher. The inaugural STEM Hero Awards were given to 10 individuals. Other honorees included Datin Seri Hajah Rosmah binti Mansor, the first lady of Malaysia; Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda; and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chairperson of the African Union. The NYAS award ceremony accompanied the launch of their Global STEM Alliance, a public-private partnership that brings together governments, companies, schools and NGOs to increase access to STEM education around the world.